She happily makes a scene at local nightclubs

Inside Kristin Rauwerdink's art studio, above Bill's Bar on Lansdowne Street, the head of a Teletubby doll is hanging by a string. The room was once a stable for Boston magnate Eban Jordan -- a freight elevator at the back of the building carried horses from the street -- and the space is airy and bright, with tall windows overlooking Fenway Park.

But in between rows of spray paint and building supplies, Rauwerdink has amassed an amalgamation of the pop-culture influences that inform her work. The house artist and set builder for Avalon, Axis, and Embassy, Rauwerdink has a pair of dust-covered angel wings, DVDs of ``Full House: The Complete First Season" and the horror flick ``Gnaw: Food of the Gods II," a big toy crab, and books about Wonder Woman. Oh, and the Teletubby head, swaying in the breeze. The quirky, ever-changing collection of oddities helps her create the visual backdrop, even the mood, behind some of the biggest club nights in the city.

``I've always felt very -- what's the word?" she asks, settling into a broken computer chair and turning her eyes upward. ``Very juxtaposed. To work, I need constant visual stimulation -- I need to understand how other people see things. That's how I keep growing."

In her three years on Lansdowne, Rauwerdink -- who is better known as Ktron, or Ktronix -- has built immense robot statues for a performance by DJ Steve Porter, oversize slot machines for a Vegas-themed New Year's bash, enormous women for a Girls Gone Wild event, and giant scenes from the sci-fi movie ``Tron," rendered three-dimensional with muslin, LED installations, and a battery of rented black lights. Each set is built in the Lansdowne Street studio from recycled supplies and stuff from Home Depot, then dragged down to Avalon in the old freight elevator, and broken down once an event is over.

At 26, Rauwerdink is a career artist who spends her time away from her studio on her own painting -- she's had shows at All Asia and Gallery Katz -- and on costuming gigs for iconoclastic metal-rockers Gwar and Boston-based performance artists Kaiju Big Battel. Recently, she also began doing freelance design for Mimoco, a trendy consumer electronics outfit based in Brookline.

``Everything I do is so different than the next thing," Rauwerdink says. ``It's almost like I have to do all these things to feel complete."

Raised in Wisconsin, she grew up immersed in art. Her parents own a sign engraving company, but they're also sculptors, and they encouraged her from an early age to scribble, carve, and mold. As a teenager, Rauwerdink signed up for a summer art camp and found her calling.

``One of the counselors took us to a vending machine on the campus, and said, `OK, the vending machine just exploded, and there's glass and candy everywhere. And you're dead!' " she remembers. ``So when the next class came by, we were all lying on the ground with bloody candy bars sticking out of our foreheads. It was amazing."

After coming east to attend Rhode Island School of Design, where she eventually earned a BFA in illustration, Rauwerdink was further inspired by brief forays into costume design for a friend's independent film. She had also become a fan of the metal-band Gwar, which uses elaborate costumes to spin its peculiar rock mythos. So when she discovered one of her instructors knew Gwar singer Dave Brockie, a.k.a. Oderus Urungus, she pounced.

``A lot of people want to come and help us build," said Matt Maguire, who helps run the band's headquarters in Virginia. ``The problem is finding people with the skill level to do what we want to do. That wasn't an issue with Ktron."

Rauwerdink asked Gwar to come and speak at RISD on the construction process for the band's costumes. Brockie and company agreed. Rauwerdink remembers working hard to befriend the band. Her reward, eventually, was an invitation to come down to Virginia to work on a handful of projects in Gwar's studio.

``Ktron was able to help us in a pinch," Maguire said. ``Right away she was already seeing things in a way that we didn't. Look, she'd be good at anything fine-art-oriented that she tried. She has the eye. Up in Boston, she's limited by all sorts of constraints, but look at what she's done."

The constraints on Lansdowne include time and money: She's typically given a month to complete a big project, although with planning and design work, the actual implementation boils down to a slapdash two weeks, with just one assistant to lend a hand. The budget for each set is around the $500 mark -- slim for clubs with this much floor space.

``Some people plan and plan forever, but Ktron's skill is that she gets everything in her head out and on the page right away," says Nick Des Jardins, 24, who helps Rauwerdink construct the sets. ``It makes me angry," he says, laughing, ``because Ktron can do all these things in half an hour that should take a whole day."

Rauwerdink and Des Jardins are also particularly skilled at recycling and repurposing old construction material, a valuable skill they picked up from their work at Kaiju. The pair met while interning at the company, which hosts fantastical wrestling competitions between larger-than-life characters with names like Silver Potato and Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle.

``Half of the last costume Ktron worked on for us was made from leftovers from her school projects. We were doubtful that she was going to be able to pull [it] off," said Kaiju's David Borden. ``But she tied it together beautifully. Let's just say she's one of our best-case examples."

For Rauwerdink, the rewards of her hard work set-building and costuming can be difficult to appreciate immediately. Unlike a gallery show, where the artists' signatures link the audience to the work, large-scale construction is a ``bit of an anonymous science," Des Jardins notes.

Rauwerdink says she concentrates instead on the creation of the art, which is part of what she sees as her progression as an artist: In the upcoming year, the Middle East club in Cambridge will show her paintings, and she agreed to an as-of-yet top secret project for Mimoco. And she hopes, eventually, to embark on a costuming career in Hollywood.

``When I was younger, I drew parts of my favorite comics and added my own style," she said, smiling. ``That's how I made my art better. I feel the same way about different mediums and styles -- I just want to keep exploring."